Wilder: More Can Be Done

State Needs Help With Infant Mortality

RICHMOND — Gov. L. Douglas Wilder on Thursday said private businesses and the federal government need to do more to help combat infant deaths at a time when the state has no money for new programs.

Wilder told a group of more than 100 lawmakers, health officials and advocates attending the Southern Legislative Summit on Healthy Infants and Family that he was pleased with progress Virginia is making in reducing infant deaths, but said more can be done.

"The task is formidable, not impossible; moral, not merely social," Wilder said at the opening of the four-day summit.

About 12 out of every 1,000 babies born in the South died within a year in 1988, health officials have said. In Virginia during that period, 10 out of every 1,000 babies died, although the death rate for black babies was twice that of whites.

Those deaths - which exceed federal goals - are attributed to a lack of health care for pregnant women and infants.

"In an era of unprecedented technology and progress infant mortality and low birth weight rates in the South are particularly troublesome points of concern for all Americans," Wilder said.

"Unfortunately, many outside the medical field in this region and throughout the country do not fully grasp the magnitude of these and related problems," he said.

After his speech, Wilder repeated his pledge that vital state health services would not be cut at a time when the state budget is being pared down by $1.4 billion. The health department is cutting $90.5 million over the next two years.

However, Wilder and state health officials acknowledge that they are cutting new programs and expansion of existing programs. Among the casualties are new scholarships to encourage doctors to serve in rural areas and a program in which nurses would help poor mothers work through the health system.

"It's very difficult to see new programs being initiated with the economy being the way it is," Wilder said.

Wilder - gaining national publicity in the last week for his criticism of federal budget crafters, including fellow Democrats - chastised the federal government for heaping new programs on the state without giving money to pay for them. That process handicaps the state and prevents it from spending on other programs, including health programs, he said.

"What will today's pregnant teens get from the latest round of huge tax increases? The same as the rest of us get: nothing," Wilder told the crowd.

"The federal government has been completely neglectful ... so the states are going to be affected," he said afterwards.

To help fill the void, Wilder said private industry should contribute more. Employers can hold forums for employees, educate its workers and give money to outreach clinics that will help solve some of the problems related to infant death rates - drug abuse and a lack of education among young pregnant women.

"Government can't do it alone," Wilder said, adding that churches, too, can help by encouraging their congregations to get involved.

The summit on infant mortality will run through Sunday. Those attending hope to go home with proposed legislation they can introduce and lobby for in their statehouses. The goal is to have measures improving health care quality and access approved by 1992.